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About Skeleton Keys

Our bones have many stories to tell, if you know how to listen.

Bone is a marvel, an adaptable and resilient building material developed over 500 million years of evolutionary history. It gives our bodies their shapes and the ability to move. It grows and changes with us, an undeniable document of who we are and how we lived. Arguably, no other part of the human anatomy has such rich scientific and cultural significance, both brimming with life and a potent symbol of death.

Brian Switek is a charming and enthusiastic osteological raconteur. In this natural and cultural history of bone, he explains where our skeletons came from, what they do inside us, and what others can learn about us when these wondrous assemblies of mineral and protein are all we’ve left behind.

Bone is as embedded in our culture as it is in our bodies. Our species has made instruments and jewelry from bone, treated the dead like collectors’ items, put our faith in skull bumps as guides to human behavior, and arranged skeletons into macabre tributes to the afterlife. Switek makes a compelling case for getting better acquainted with our skeletons, in all their surprising roles. Bridging the worlds of paleontology, anthropology, medicine, and forensics, Skeleton Keys illuminates the complex life of bones inside our bodies and out.

About Skeleton Keys

Our bones have many stories to tell, if you know how to listen.

Bone is a marvel, an adaptable and resilient building material developed over 500 million years of evolutionary history. It gives our bodies their shapes and the ability to move. It grows and changes with us, an undeniable document of who we are and how we lived. Arguably, no other part of the human anatomy has such rich scientific and cultural significance, both brimming with life and a potent symbol of death.

Brian Switek is a charming and enthusiastic osteological raconteur. In this natural and cultural history of bone, he explains where our skeletons came from, what they do inside us, and what others can learn about us when these wondrous assemblies of mineral and protein are all we’ve left behind.

Bone is as embedded in our culture as it is in our bodies. Our species has made instruments and jewelry from bone, treated the dead like collectors’ items, put our faith in skull bumps as guides to human behavior, and arranged skeletons into macabre tributes to the afterlife. Switek makes a compelling case for getting better acquainted with our skeletons, in all their surprising roles. Bridging the worlds of paleontology, anthropology, medicine, and forensics, Skeleton Keys illuminates the complex life of bones inside our bodies and out.

About Skeleton Keys

Our bones have many stories to tell, if you know how to listen.

Bone is a marvel, an adaptable and resilient building material developed over 500 million years of evolutionary history. It gives our bodies their shapes and the ability to move. It grows and changes with us, an undeniable document of who we are and how we lived. Arguably, no other part of the human anatomy has such rich scientific and cultural significance, both brimming with life and a potent symbol of death.

Brian Switek is a charming and enthusiastic osteological raconteur. In this natural and cultural history of bone, he explains where our skeletons came from, what they do inside us, and what others can learn about us when these wondrous assemblies of mineral and protein are all we’ve left behind.

Bone is as embedded in our culture as it is in our bodies. Our species has made instruments and jewelry from bone, treated the dead like collectors’ items, put our faith in skull bumps as guides to human behavior, and arranged skeletons into macabre tributes to the afterlife. Switek makes a compelling case for getting better acquainted with our skeletons, in all their surprising roles. Bridging the worlds of paleontology, anthropology, medicine, and forensics, Skeleton Keys illuminates the complex life of bones inside our bodies and out.

About Brian Switek

Brian Switek is a collection of 206-some-odd bones and associated soft tissues. He’s also the author of the books My Beloved Brontosaurus and Written in Stone, as well as the Scientific American blog Laelaps. His bylines have appeared in National… More about Brian Switek

About Brian Switek

Brian Switek is a collection of 206-some-odd bones and associated soft tissues. He’s also the author of the books My Beloved Brontosaurus and Written in Stone, as well as the Scientific American blog Laelaps. His bylines have appeared in National… More about Brian Switek

About Brian Switek

Brian Switek is a collection of 206-some-odd bones and associated soft tissues. He’s also the author of the books My Beloved Brontosaurus and Written in Stone, as well as the Scientific American blog Laelaps. His bylines have appeared in National… More about Brian Switek

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Praise

“Smart, lively, and hugely informative, Skeleton Keys is the ideal guide to the bones around us and in us.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction “Brian Switek writes with remarkable grace about the natural world. In Skeleton Keys, he looks inward, making us keenly aware of the marvels of the bones that give us the scaffolding we need to survive. Every chapter has some surprise, told in elegant tales, that you will repeat to your friends.” —Carl Zimmer, author of She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

“From touring the famed Mutter Museum and London ossuaries, to ferreting out what really happened to Richard III, Skeleton Keys is a lyrical love letter to the 206 or so bones in the human skeleton and the colorful figures who have studied them over the centuries.”—Jennifer Ouellette, author of Me, Myself, and Why and The Calculus Diaries

“Skeleton Keys is an absorbing tour through the world of bones and the bones of the world. Considering in turn dinosaurs, saints, kings, and our own possible future, it is an assured and revelatory book.” —Maryn McKenna, author of Big Chicken and Superbug